It is difficult to know what to say about Erich Fromm, especially in a short piece such as this.
He seems to me to be a total outlier in terms of his contribution to public discourse, with his radical emphasis on love as a solution to our problems both personal and political.
Fromm saw very little difference between these two realms. His “breakthrough” work Escape from Freedom deconstructs the sado-masochistic structure of Hitler’s personality, then demonstrates how that played out so disastrously for Germany and the rest of the world.
This kind of personal/political analysis has its limits, but in my view it is the most informative and constructive way of looking at politics and social structures. If we can understand how our inner structures play out in the formation of the world around us, we might be able to work towards changing that world. For me this seems much more promising than an attempt to change the world from the outside in.
Fromm also wrote very frankly and energetically about the one subject that seems forbidden from public discourse: Love. The one thing that all of us crave, the one thing which if denied to the us causes catastrophic personal damage that plays out in the world as violence and intolerance and hatred.
Love one another; the rest will take care of itself. That's a bit stronger than the famous quote by Hillel, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and these here are very desperate times.
P. Julian
13 January 2019